The territory’s challenged health care system prompted a small but passionate group of protesters to gather outside the Juan F. Luis Hospital on St. Croix and the Roy Lester Schneider Medical Center on St. Thomas Tuesday to demand action.
The main event occurred on St. Croix, where Karen Dickenson, representing the grassroots organization People’s Choice, led a score of people in lambasting hospital leadership and elected officials for underfunding the territory’s hospitals to the point where basic and critical equipment are in short supply.
“When you live in a society where health care is not important, your society is doomed,” she cried into a microphone. “Health is wealth. And when you have a healthy society, you have a healthy hospital, because it goes together. Money has no object in this here, because if you don’t have health, you can’t spend money. If you don’t have health, you can’t educate. If you don’t have health, you can’t love.”
Dickenson, who also runs the Collective Collaboration shelter for unhoused people, ticked off a number of deficiencies at the hospital.
“We don’t have a portable X-ray machine. We’re taking feeding tubes and washing them out and putting them back in our children,” she claimed. “We don’t have doctors. We don’t have the necessary sanitary equipment for doctors to wash their hands, to take care of our people. We don’t have a neurologist. And the list goes on of ‘don’ts.’”
Before long, JFL Chief Executive Darlene Baptiste, who assumed leadership of the hospital in February, crossed Pepper Tree Road. When Dickenson handed her the microphone, she initially explained that she was there to listen. Then, she answered protesters’ questions directly.
“We do have challenges,” she acknowledged. “As a matter of fact, we do have a lot of challenges, but at the end of the day, I am extremely hopeful, and that’s one of the reasons I want us to have this collaborative discussion.”
Baptiste said that “98 and a half percent” of the funds recently allocated to the hospitals from Epstein-related settlement money had been spent — mostly on the hospital’s arrears.
“That’s not the real-time costing of what it costs us to do business,” she said. “There’s two tiers for our uncompensated care overall … and it’ll take us a while — just like any big boat or ship — to navigate and turn things around, but our team is working diligently to address those concerns.”
Baptiste said procuring hospital equipment is a “supply and demand” issue for a jurisdiction surrounded by water.
“So if we make the payments today, we’re not going to get the supplies in tomorrow,” she said. “So that’s one of the other pieces.”
Richard Bachoo, who attended Tuesday’s protest, questioned how the hospital could continue to operate if one-time emergency payments are being used to cover arrears.
“She’s talking about paying off debt that they have, but the hospital has to continue a life beyond debt,” he told the Source. “So the question is, what are we doing to ensure the hospital is meeting its basic financial obligation, plus they have the revenue to move forward, so we’re not constantly in crisis? The hospital cannot be in crisis. It is the only place we have for emergency and stabilization issues, and so it needs to be fully funded and taken care of. That should be the number one priority of the government — not funding tourism or other things.”
Bachoo described himself as one of the people elected officials often talk about — a Virgin Islander who found success on the mainland but moved back home to be a part of their community. Now, he said, his family’s biggest concern is the state of the hospital.
“Over 40 years ago, my father cut his finger off in an accident,” he said, adding that his parents lived nearby at the time. “Came to the hospital, they sewed it back on — it was fine.”
Bachoo said that three months ago, a friend’s boyfriend had a different story.
“He cut his finger off in an accident. He came to the hospital, they couldn’t sew it back on. That indicates that we’re not moving in the right direction,” he said. “And when I think of the governor is calling for a special session to discuss what is clearly his gripe over salaries, or whatever it is, and not calling to deal with the most important responsibility he has — which is to the health and safety of the people — we should have had an emergency meeting on the hospitals.”
While the spotlight remained on St. Croix, a small but determined group also assembled outside Schneider Regional Medical Center on St. Thomas — many of them familiar faces in local advocacy circles.
Among them was former Senate candidate Margaret Price, who voiced frustration over what she described as years of neglect at the hospital. Referring to Monday’s legislative hearing on the abrupt shutdown of Caribbean Kidney Center’s St. Thomas facility — and the strain it placed on SRMC — Price said the territory cannot rely solely on one hospital to fill all the gaps.
“There needs to be other options for dialysis care because the hospital is in dire straits,” she said. “It’s lacking so much — it’s understaffed, it’s short on supplies — and more people need to come out and show their support.”
She added that the pay scale for nurses needs to be raised but that lawmakers and the governor must help carry that weight. “They can’t do everything themselves,” she said.
Price also shared her own experience, saying she was scheduled for cataract surgery in April but has yet to receive a follow-up appointment.
“They told me they just don’t have the staff or the supplies,” she said. “What are we supposed to do? What we need is for the government to get the money that the hospital needs to properly operate.”
Also present was community member Elwin D. Chinnery Sr., who said Tuesday was his first time speaking out publicly. Reflecting on a past experience when he had to wait hours for treatment after being stabbed, he said, “If that was years ago, imagine what it’s like now — and we just keep hearing the same thing.”
Chinnery said he had been inspired by the advocacy efforts on St. Croix and wanted to lend his voice.
“We’re in a dire state of health, lacking necessities and supplies — and we need to get involved and try and help,” he said.
